We thought the Government was only adding VAT to private schools. But it turns out it’s adding it to every school, just not in the way we expected.
Yes, the Government really is changing VAT in education.
Well…sort of…
Ministers have promised to simplify the post-16 educational landscape. From 2027, students will now choose between three pathways:
V-Levels for vocational learning,
A-Levels for academic study, and
T-Levels for technical routes.
Which gives us V, A, and T.1
The stated aim is admirable, I think: greater choice, clearer progression and parity of esteem between practical and academic pathways.
Yet what is billed as simplification already feels like bureaucracy in disguise. BTECs begat T-Levels; T-Levels begat V-Levels; and A-Levels begat the illusion that one set of letters could define a life.
Policymakers keep rearranging the same alphabet, hoping a new combination will finally spell success.
Meanwhile, another kind of VAT reform has already arrived — this one from the Treasury rather than the Department for Education. Since January 2025, independent schools have lost their long-standing VAT exemption. It is, by most measures, a progressive change. For decades, the state has subsidised privilege through tax reliefs; extending VAT brings a degree of fiscal consistency and could redirect resources toward the public system. Even so, it highlights a deeper truth: that reform in education often comes through accountancy rather than aspiration.
And the reforms don’t stop there. The Government has also announced that funding for state schools offering the International Baccalaureate (IB)will be withdrawn from 2026-27. What was once a modest top-up – around £2,400 per student – to support a broad, globally recognised curriculum in a relatively small number of state schools will now come to an end. The rationale is to focus resources on “subjects that lead to good jobs and drive economic growth.”
The justification is utilitarian: to prioritise subjects that “lead to good jobs and drive economic growth.” Yet the IB was never about narrow utility. It cultivates internationalism, critical thinking and civic engagement – qualities Britain’s fractured politics (and society) could use more of. Removing it from state schools sends an unmistakable message: breadth and aspiration are for those who can afford it.
Taken together, these VAT reforms — one fiscal, one linguistic, one philosophical — expose the limits of Britain’s education imagination. We seem trapped between two instincts: an accountant’s urge to balance the books and the bureaucrat’s urge to rename them. We are promised reform, yet what we mostly receive is reformulation.
Rebranding qualifications does not make them more meaningful. Taxing aspiration does not make opportunity more equal if the savings are not reinvested where they matter most. And cutting the IB — one of the few state-school routes that still nurtures a genuinely global outlook — feels like a retreat from both fairness and aspiration.
The real question is not about VAT, but about value. What do we truly value in education? If it is social mobility, the broadest pathways must remain open to all. If it is fairness, investment should follow inclusion, not advantage. If it is the future, then every reform should begin with a simple test: does it expand possibilities for the child who starts with the least?
We thought the Government was only adding VAT to private schools.
It turns out, it’s taxing the very purpose of education itself.
- It was my friend Jon who came up with this at breakfast this morning, and it made me giggle. ↩︎
Serendipities 